That God first placed an angel
with a flaming sword to guard
Eden’s closed gates, that He gave us
signs to declare a different logic,
but when the horse of death rode through town
it could not stop for me who invited it,
who reached out my hand to feel
my fingers course through its wet mane.
That pleasure’s excess could poison,
that we could be punished even further—
I knew. Snow falls. Termites eat out
the tree’s giant heart. I wish
I’d promised to stay changeless
had I been changed. I wish the geranium
back to bloom, the fire back to the candles
the children carried through the orchard
the night I watched the woman
flatten the snake with her foot
just to see how much blood it held.
I’ve been careless, yes, and spared,
and it had nothing to do with God. All
eventually comes to light—the horse
found stiff in a field and snow-filled; the angel
in the hangar with lesions across his cheek,
his sword drawn low, no longer defined by fire.